Could anyone tell me what the easiest way to program my servos is. so far i have bought a botboard 2, a basic stamp 2, and some futaba servos. i am entering a tsa animatronics competition and i plan to use at least 8 servos. is there any type of software designed especially for the botboard 2 because so far all i could find to program the basic stamp 2 was the software provided by parallax.
any help will be appreciated.thanks
Hi Kattdatty,
The easiest way to do it is to get a SSC to do the job. It is possible to give the SSC a simple command over a serial port from your pc or chip. To move the servo connected on pin 0 to his middle position you would send something like “#0P1500â€
I agree with Xan,
You could probably try doing some puseout commands on the basic stamp. I do have some doubts of controlling 8 servos and still doing something else, but maybe.
The easiest way is to offload all of the work to an SSC-32
Kurt
thanks, i actually happen to have a ssc-32 but i didnt know u could connect it to the bb2, but what software do i use to program all this, so far i played around a bit with the lynxterm software , but how do u save a program to the basic stamp?
i appreciate all the help 
The basic stamp is programmed with free software available from the parallax website. You can buy or download their manual which is very informative for the beginner.
We have some simple examples for sending commands from the Stamp to the SSC-32. This one is for an arm, but it could be used for anything really. It shows the physical connection using the data cable that comes with the SSC-32.
lynxmotion.com/images/html/proj51a.htm
Now do i need the Lynxmotion Visual Sequencer V1.16 to have my botboard/basic stamp 2 control my ssc-32 ? if so , is there anywhere i can get it for free ? im 15 and dont have a job
Hi Kattdatty,
Have you looked at the project that Robot Dude mentioned in his last response. It describes hooking up a wire from the Bot Board to talk to the SSC-32. It then shows examples of Basic Stamp code to talk to the SSC-32 in this case to talk to an ARM.
Have you tried making these connections and see one or more of your servos move?
Beyond what Jim mentioned previously, I am not sure what else to suggest. Maybe you should try to better describe what it is you are trying to do and break this down into smaller pieces that you can solve. For example do you expect a PC to control or generate the sequences? Are there any sensors? …
Got to run
Kurt
hello kurte,
i have looked at the link and have made the connection, Now can i copy and paste the text from his example into the basic stamp 2 compiler and expect for the servos to move( given that my power supply is sufficient)?
or is the part where it says the servo positions #10P1500… ] just a comment?
PS; my overall goal is to have my botboard with bs2 tell my ssc to move about 8 servos to their specified position, then wait, then move to another position, then wait, then move to another position, and so on. Its for an animatronics project ive been working on, the bot is built, i just have to sync its motions with music.
Hi again,
Yes, assuming you have a sufficient power supply and the servos plugged into the appropriate pins on the SSC-21 or edit the code that you cut and paste to match the pin numbers that your servos are plugged into. You should look at the SSC-32 manual for details of the commands:lynxmotion.com/images/html/build136.htm
But a quick description of the first code in that tutorial might help?
[code]serout 15,6,"#10 P1500 #11 P1500 #12 P1500 #13 P1500 #14 P1500 #15 P1500",13]
start:
goto start 'loop[/code]
This is a real simple program that does one simple serial output on IO line 15 with baud mode 6(I would have to look up in a BS2 manual to know what baud rate that cooresponds to).
This one serial output tells the servos connected to IO pins 10,11,12,13,14 and 15 on the SSC-32 to go to the position 1500 which should be pretty close to the center position for those servos. The program then simply loops on itself forever.
For your project it sounds like you can start of doing something similiar, where you tell each of your servos to go to a known location, then wait awhile and then go to the next location. The hard part is figuring out the positions and the timings… You later may decide to make it table driven, or try to generate SSC-32 sequences.
You could of course get the positions by trial and error, or use the terminal program connected directly from PC to SSC-32. You could also write a VB application (or other such language) on your PC to use sliders and the like to control your project. I think there are a few examples of this up in the forum. I did something like this for my BRAT awhile ago, but the VB app talked to my Atom Pro program, not the SSC-32, but that would not be hard to modify… Or you could use something like Excel to control your robot like Zenta did for the phoenix.
Good Luck
Kurt
Yup, if you look closely at the mini tutorial it actually does exactly what he’s asking for. Move servos to a position, then pause, then move to the next position.
i think im finally getting the hang of this stuff, thanks alot guys, now all i need to do is figure out why my ssc-32 isnt working on my lynxterm.
